The Right Choice at the Right Time: A Herding Experiment in Endogenous Time

Herding describes the phenomenon in decision-making where an economic agent disregards his own private information to follow the actions of his predecessors as in Banerjee (1992). With later decision-makers simply copying earlier decisions their private information cannot be inferred by other decision-makers and will be forever lost. There is some experimental evidence on simple sequential herding of this type in the literature, notably Anderson and Holt (1997). This paper differs by allowing subjects to delay their decision-making in order to benefit from observing others' actions as in more recent herding models such as Chamley and Gale (1994). The results in this paper suggest that subjects will indeed delay when their private information is not sufficiently strong. Despite this ability to wait, as predicted in the theoretical literature, cascades remained ubiquitous and more worrying still, reverse-cascades occurred in which incorrect decisions made by early decision-makers produced informational cascades on the wrong action. In an alternative design, informing subjects that they had made incorrect choices only made matters worse as subjects moved further away from rational behavior.     

Advertising,Price and Quality in Self–regulating Professions: A Survey

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between advertising, fees and quality in the self–regulating professions. Much of the literature is derived from the perspective of advertising as an information–enhancing device, helping to reduce the information asymmetry between professional and client. This is consistent with the majority of the empirical studies which suggest that advertising tends to have a downward effect on professional fees, with little if any adverse effect on quality. There are, however, important issues of method and measurement which may lessen the force of this conclusion     

Dynamic R&D competition with memory

We consider a differential game of R&D competition and explore the impact of rivalry on the firms' investment behavior over time. Using closed-loop strategies and hence allowing for strategic interactions among rival firms we show that R&D spending by the individual competitor is increased due to competition in the race for priority. This leads us to argue that competitive encounters enhance R&D activities at the same time as increasing efficiency in the race for a technological breakthrough.     

Domestic and international strategic interactions in environment policy formation

Summary. In this paper, we establish the most possilbe general formulation of the technology governing carbon-gas emission, giving rise to global external diseconomies, and ty to explore into the strategic interactions,both domestic and international, when an individual country decides on the environmental policies. Through the comparison among emission taxes, quotas, and standard in the perfectly competitive private economies, we find that the first two policies are equivalent but they are different in effects by virtue of what we may call the tax-exemption effect of emission standards. Such a difference in the policy effect further affects the other country's welfare through the global externalities, amplified through whether the government can precommit to either the emission tax or the emission standard. Received: January 16, 2001; revised version: April 16, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The authors thank the valuable comments by an anonymous referee. Ministry of Education and Science for its financial support is also greatly acknowledged. Correspondence to:K. Kiyono     

西部经济和生态环境互动模式:产业互动视角的分析

西部地区生态环境的脆弱性决定了西部地区在工业化过程中不能走"先污染、后治理"的发展模式,而应该强化经济与生态环境的互动发展.产业互动是经济与生态环境互动发展的重要组成部分,产业互动的思路是按循环经济的理念推进产业结构优化,依据比较优势原则发展西部特色产业作为依托点,以建立生态工业园作为产业互动的新载体.     

基于信息经济学视角的品牌资产生成研究

目前，国内外品牌资产的研究大都从企业或消费者单一角度出发，对品牌资产概念和外延体系及其品牌资产管理模式等方面进行研究，对品牌资产生成的研究甚为罕见。本文从信息经济学中信号理论的观点出发，对在品牌资产生成中信息传递的特殊作用、传递机理以及品牌资产生成路径进行了系统的分析，并首次提出只有建立企业与消费者的互动关系，企业与消费者才能最有效地传递和解读双方所发出的品牌信号，使得品牌信号的信息含量最充分地在企业和消费者之间传递，从而使品牌资产得以生成并在不断演进中增值。     

社会互动、相对财富关注及股市参与

已有的研究表明,社会互动推动了家庭的股市参与。依据社会互动推动家庭股市参与不同机制的理论基础和预测,本文对不同的具体机制进行了研究,我们发现在局部品支出比例高、收入分布集中度高的区(村),社会互动推动股市参与的作用更显著,这与外部习惯模型及相对财富关注模型的理论预测一致,事前对局部稀缺品的关注使得家庭的股市参与存在外部性。社会互动推动股市参与其他机制的理论预测则未得到数据的支持。     

组织间关系:价值界面与关系租金的获取

价值界面与关系租金概念的提出大大地拓展了获取企业内生性成长中各种资源的空间。本文通过价值界面、关系租金的模块化生产范式和关系型交易范式的分析,指出了价值界面与关系租金对于帕累托边界外推、埃奇沃思方盒改进的经济学意义,并进一步得出了价值界面构成与关系租金获取的四维模型,为网络创新提供了积极的研究视角。     

社会互动对规模养殖户环保饲料支付意愿的影响研究*——基于改进的目标导向理论模型分析框架

［目的］通过引入社会互动变量改进目标导向行为理论框架,探讨生猪规模养殖户对环保饲料的支付意愿及其影响因素,为完善畜禽养殖污染防治政策提供参考借鉴。［方法］以湖北省生猪规模养殖户为研究对象,应用Heckman两阶段模型,研究规模养殖户对环保饲料的支付意愿。［结果］大多数规模养殖户（8134%）愿意采用环保饲料,且平均意愿支付水平为每头生猪饲料成本的669%（4680元/头）。社会互动中的干群互动、同行互动均能显著提升规模养殖户对环保饲料的支付意愿,但同时同行互动不利于其意愿支付水平的提升。进一步的异质性分析表明,在环保饲料支付意愿决策上,社会互动较少的规模养殖户更容易受到制度规范的约束,而社会互动较多的规模养殖户则更易受到感知养殖热情的影响。［结论］政府部门应加大生态环保宣传力度,并借助多种方式推动规模养殖户进行社会互动; 同时可依据社会互动程度的不同,分别制定相应措施以促进规模养殖户对环保饲料支付意愿的提升。     

Social capital,user motivation,and collaborative consumption of online platform services

Collaborative consumption is broadly defined as sharing, obtaining, and giving access to products and services through peer networks online. As it is expected to resolve the societal and environmental problems, quite a few studies investigated consumers’ motivations that lead to positive attitudes and intention for collaborative consumption. This paper aims to study the determinants that motivate participants to perceive a positive attitude towards collaborative consumption focusing on three salient traits of social capital (shared goal, social interaction tie, and norms of reciprocity). The study found that social capital exerts a more substantial influence on intrinsic motivation (enjoyment and sustainability) than extrinsic motivation (economic benefit). The study also found that different social capital traits display different effects on motivation. In particular, the shared goal was a key determinant of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And all three motivations positively affect collaborative consumption attitudes.